A photograph of the Dalai Lama wearing a baseball cap with the words “Team Taiwan” during his 90th birthday celebration in Dharamsala, India, on Sunday is at once amusing and endearing. The message behind the image is far more profound than the immediate mirth.
That “Team Taiwan” is a thing at all, in apposition to “Chinese Taipei,” is an affirmation of Taiwan’s sovereignty and a rejection of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) narrative. That an internationally influential figure is willing to wear it at all is a rarity.
The affirmation is a theme that the Dalai Lama, Tibetans and Taiwanese can rally behind. It is an expression of the local “writ international,” of the idea that China’s relations with Tibet and Taiwan are not “domestic issues”: They are not only of international concern, they are international.
At what point does the local become international? It was reassuring to read the analysis of the geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer in yesterday’s Taipei Times (“Lai’s tough talk stoking tensions,” July 9, p8), in which he provides an informed, objective, nuanced summary of what is happening in Taiwan and brings out a sense of the international ramifications of what at first appears to be a local issue: the mass recall movement.
Bremmer mentions President William Lai’s (賴清德) proposed 17 steps to counter the threat from China and the CCP’s infiltration efforts, and also the 10 planned “national unity” speeches asserting cultural and political independence from China. He gives the context of the legislative situation, and writes how Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are backing — not orchestrating — the recall vote.
He writes that Lai’s rhetoric is “for domestic consumption,” and that China’s military planners would likely be preparing a show of force in response; from there he moves onto the possibility of an invasion attempt and potential US involvement, bringing the situation very much into the international realm.
If the recalls are successful, Lai could take his foot off the gas, be less provocative in his rhetoric and reduce tensions, Bremmer writes.
Implicit in this analysis is that the international community could breathe a sigh of relief, that Lai and the DPP, vulnerable to being accused of rocking the boat in already dangerously choppy waters, could pull back from the brink.
“If the DPP ... regains control of the legislature, Lai will have fewer incentives to reach for the nationalist megaphone; if it falls short, he will keep the volume — and the danger level — elevated,” he wrote.
The local has become international. However, the analysis falls down, on at least three counts:
First, the tensions are unlikely to decrease, because the CCP has no intention of releasing the pressure. It needs it to keep Taiwanese intimidated and the international community on tenterhooks.
Second, local political tensions would not abate. When the recall votes are over, whatever the outcome, this would not be the end of it. The mass recall is a grassroots movement, not orchestrated — albeit encouraged — by the DPP, and in Lai’s national talks on unity, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party would not allow truth to get between them and what they consider to be justified revenge.
Finally, Lai has no intention of taking his foot off the gas. His strategic arc thus far has been to reinforce the message on Taiwan’s sovereign rights, and he is continuing with this: see the discussion in the op-ed on this page by National Taiwan University professor Chiang Huang-chih (姜皇池) of Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung’s (林佳龍) speech at the ILA-ASIL Asia-Pacific Research Forum on Monday.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS